Friday, July 11, 2008

Mark Twain Festival XI

"[Grant] was under sentence of death last spring [due to cancer]; he sat thinking, musing, several days  nobody knows what about; then he pulled himself together and set to work to finish [his memoirs], a colossal task for a dying man. Presently his hand gave out; fate seemed to have got him checkmated. Dictation was suggested. No, he never could do that; had never tried it; too old to learn, now. By and by  if he could only do Appomattox  well. So he sent for a stenographer, and dictated 9,000 words at a single sitting!  never pausing, never hesitating for a word, never repeating  and in the written-out copy he made hardly a correction. He dictated again, every two or three days  the intervals were intervals of exhaustion and slow recuperation  and at last he was able to tell me that he had written more matter than could be got into the book. I then enlarged the book  had to. Then he lost his voice. He was not quite done yet, however;  there was no end of little plums and spices to be stuck in, here and there; and this work he patiently continued, a few lines a day, with pad and pencil, till far into July, at Mt. McGregor. One day he put his pencil aside, and said he was done  there was nothing more to do. If I had been there I could have foretold the shock that struck the world three days later."